OUR READERS WRITE...

January 12, 2014

On Dec. 17, 2013, Mayor Berlin signed an ordinance with an emergency clause, raising the annual occupancy license fee 100 percent. This was done in spite of the fact that the city of Salem will enter 2104 with a surplus of over $1 million.

How in the world can this increase be called an emergency?

Of course, adding an emergency clause to the ordinance, does stop the citizens of Salem from expressing their opinion of this excessive tax increase.

What is the mayor afraid of?

Why not allow the citizens of Salem the right to voice their opposition to this ordinance?

GEOFFREY GOLL,

Salem

------

Should be for and not against the people

To the editor:

On Dec. 31 I read an article about a Cleveland man admitting to raping children and killing two women. Since he pleaded guilty to 297 counts, including murdering the women and kidnapping and raping children he will get two to 20 years to life sentences. This is outrageous!

And now another atrocity, the authorities responsible for giving these types of people a life sentence should be put on "death row" themselves for allowing killers and rapist to live in prison at the taxpayer's expense.

Our prisons should go back to the old standards as a punishment for their actions. Not a luxury hotel as they have become: three free meals a day, TV and activities, workout facilities, free medical, dental, etc. Again at our expense.

One other thought: our rights as stated in our preamble constitution is of the people, by the people, for the people. So where and how does Obama and our government have the right or power to force insurance coverage on us, the people, and yet give insurance and free money to foreigners and illegal immigrants at our, the people's expense? This insurance issue should be voted on by the people and every vote counted!

Our government and Obama are supposed to be for the people, not against the people!

BILL GRAY,

Lisbon

-----

Losing importance of connection to youth

To the editor:

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and connected with family and friends which is of the upmost importance. As a former educator I have a concern about the focus of family and the children constantly texting and staring at their cell phones, i Pads, computers, or any other electronic devices. We seem to be losing the importance of connection with the younger generation.

On average kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend between seven and a half hours a day, seven days a week looking for web diversions.

"It is like chocolate to the brain," states psychiatrist Gene Cohen. We crave it. At any given moment when the phone rings we are pulled away from our immediate surroundings into the world of elsewhere and others. We turn our attention away from those present.

We are addicted to e-mail, You Tube, or a Facebook "fix." We are risking our child's future. While parents and children are enjoying constant access to everything and everyone on the Internet, we struggle to maintain a meaningful personal connection with each other in our homes.

It is the digital take over of family. Were stuck with it since society is all wired around it now.

I'm not anti-tech. We do use it to connect with family and friends, for research work, and other hobbies. In school it has amazing potential to expand learning. But research shows problems on infant and child development, about narrowing the way the baby brain organizes for lifelong learning.

The connection that begins in the family shapes a child's brain that tech can't replace. Nothing can match the power of our attention and love. Screens and tech cannot match it, but they can replace it if we let it happen.

Parents make wise choices how we and our children use tech without sacrificing the one most important thing we can do. That is to have a loving, suspecting, and meaningful relationship with our family.

BOB SHILLING,

Salem

------

Challenges claim that nation justly unfounded

To the editor:

Who are these history revisionists that bark out as if in a carnival that this country was unjustly founded, that the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, and the idiom of "the end justifies the means?"

Their ceaseless and senseless mantra of the mythical advantage, "white privilege" attributed to all white people to explain away the social and economic failure of minority group politics. It is a proven fact that more people have been taken out of poverty by capitalism than any aid created by a religion or government, and there are far too many successful individuals of minorities in America, but that doesn't fit the narrative of social justice.

The reality is that freedom is the solution to the human condition. This country has for over 300 years been the most successful country the world has ever seen and that is proof enough. No government program created this country. Free people created this country. This fact supports the true explanation of American exceptionalism.

The vast majority of the people of this world have never known the kind of liberty and freedom that are taken for granted every day in this country. For the first time in human history, a government and country was founded on the belief that leaders serve the population. This country was the first in history, the exception to the rule is what American exceptionalism is.

Along this same line God is a necessary legal concept. Our founding documents set forth that our rights as humans pre-date the government of men, those rights cannot be abridged (not easily). They come from God and are inalienable. Now when someone makes the "What would Jesus do?" argument adding that Jesus wants the state to take over "charity" well, that's just blasphemy.

Abraham Lincoln explained that the word liberty has two totally different meanings to different people. One would see liberty as his exercise of his free will to do with himself and his property as he pleases. It would be another man's understanding to have the liberty to do as he will with the other man and that man's property. It is the same word but totally different meaning and totally incompatible.

This all ties in with Obamacare that is Democrat democracy that is wealth redistribution that is Communism that is un-American. In summary if you evoke God to justify the Democrats usurping of our liberty because the end justifies the means, you are on the wrong side of history.

WILLIAM E. EARDLEY,

East Liverpool

------

The whole carbon claim is a hoax

To the editor:

Many claim to support wind and solar energy because of their concern for the environment, the whole global warming/climate change fallacy. Let me put an end to this lie once and for all.

Anyone who has watched the animated movie "Ice Age" is somewhat familiar with our history. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, had we been living 20,000 years ago we would have a mile thick sheet of ice on our heads. This is known as the Last Glacial Maximum.

During that time, humans were Stone Age hunter gatherers. No coal fired-power plants or SUVs. The only carbon emissions came from Fred Flintstone's breath. So if man-made carbon emissions didn't cause the earth to warm and the ice to melt, what did?

A more recent historical anomaly the enviro-groupies can't seem to explain are the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The Medieval Warm Period lasted three centuries from about 950 to 1250. As an example of the dramatic increase in global temperature during this period, remnants of vineyards have been found among Viking ruins in Greenland near the Arctic Circle.

Today, Greenland's climate cannot begin to sustain the growing of grapes. Since we know the carbon dioxide levels were much lower than today, where did the warming come from?

The Little Ice Age occurred after the Medieval Warm Period from about 1350 to about 1850. While not a true ice age, records show such a decrease in global temperatures that crops failed worldwide leading to widespread starvation.

As the human population on earth was less that 7 percent of what it is today, how could such a small number of people effect climate change to such a dramatic degree?

The answer is they couldn't, just as we can't. Throughout Earth's history there have been swings in global temperature that have nothing to do with the impact of humanity.

So where did this widespread belief that the climate is at the mercy of man come from? It is a hoax perpetuated by the ignorant and the deceitful.

Let us begin with "Climategate," portrayed as the final nail in the coffin of Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming (AGW)? Widely reported by a plethora of news outlets as "the greatest scandal in modern science," hacked e-mail documents exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory proved conclusively that conspiracy, collusion, and a manipulation of climate data was business as usual for these so- called "scientists".

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia was the primary research arm of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which had been disseminating and supporting global warming theory for decades.

An unknown individual or group breached CRU's server and published thousands of emails and computer files. These documents showed fraud and deceit, eliminating any credibility the IPCC had left in declaring carbon emissions are causing climate change.

Another global warming bombshell surfaced when a prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be a fraud.

The headlines read, "Global Warming Junk Science: The Hockey Stick - A New Low in Climate Science." Much of the current panic began when Dr. Michael Mann, of Penn State University, published the now-discredited "hockey stick" temperature plot which became the poster child for advocating Cap and Trade policy. The hoax was discovered when an external study of Mann's algorithm showed that no matter what data you enter into his model, the resulting plot is always in the shape of a hockey stick. In other words, it was meaningless.

Human's contribution to global warming can be examined by looking at some real data. Carbon dioxide comprises only 3.62 percent of the atmospheric makeup. And of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, humans contribute only 3.4 percent. What does this all boil down to? We are about to destroy our economy over .00123 of the atmosphere (not enough to begin to effect the global temperature)! Even the EPA estimates Cap and Trade restrictions would reduce global temperature by no more than 0.006 of a degree in 90 years. Yet it will devastate our fossil fuel-based economy.

And the face of global warming, the poor polar bear, on the brink of extinction as the Warmists want you to believe. The fact is, the world polar bear population is at a modern-day high and growing. Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist with Canada's Federal Provincial Polar Bear Technical Committee, puts the current population up 40 percent since 1974.

The most damning evidence that this is a conspiracy to empty the pockets of the industrialized nations: 31,487 American earth, environmental and climatological scientists, including 9,029 with PhDs, have signed the "Oregon Petition," which states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

Compare this to the number of UN scientists (52) who support the media-hyped IPCC 2007 "Summary for Policymakers" which is a political document, not a scientific one and is continually quoted as evidence of impending environmental doom. Whose opinion is more credible?

Al Gore stated, "The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this." Al, see above. You are correct the debate is over and you are the loser!

Since we mentioned Al Gore, here's something American media will never report. A British court has determined that Al Gore's shumckumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" contains at least eleven material falsehoods ("lies," for those of you who are insensitive). Al's movie is illegal to show in Great Britain's schools without a disclaimer about these "inconsistencies" with reality.

The Wall Street Journal reports that several foreign countries have determined that subsidizing green energy distorts the free market and leads to net job losses.

For instance, Spain's data demonstrated that each "green" job created as a result of green energy subsidies, 2.2 jobs are lost in other sectors of the economy. In fact, several European countries, such as Germany, France, and Spain cut their subsidies for renewable energy several years ago, after realizing that they do not lead to the desired results. The U.S. should learn from their mistakes instead of repeating them.

A visible example of this is the U.S. experiment with wind farms. Over 14,000 wind turbines are inoperable and have been abandoned. That's right, 14000 windmill carcasses fouling the landscape.

In most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying climate religion. Where is the environmentalist outrage about this blight? Imagine the outcry if those turbines were abandoned oil rigs. On average, over 80 percent of the cost of these wind farms was paid for by the taxpayer. That is your money rusting away into oblivion.

I could go on and on with report after study after testimonial that humans have very little effect on the Earth's climate.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, the most prolific greenhouse gas is water vapor accounting for about 95 percent of Earth's greenhouse effect. Perhaps we can cover the oceans with Saran wrap. That solution is about as practicable as the current wind and solar projects.

Once fully implemented these taxes and regulations will cost the economy trillions of dollars and millions of jobs when as you have read, climate change isn't manmade, only the evidence supporting it is.

Have we gone insane, squandering hard earned taxpayer money on these unwanted and unneeded green subsidies and initiatives? If green energy is so great, let it stand alone, without government support, and live or die in the free market.

Let the economy thrive without the stranglehold of environmental regulations that are based on fictitious hypotheses.